by Barbara Loe Fisher

There are three basic facts you should remember when you are exercising your right to make an informed, voluntary vaccination choice for yourself or your child in America:

1. Informed Consent is a Human Right: The right to voluntary, informed consent to a medical intervention, including use of a pharmaceutical product such as a vaccine that can injure or kill you or your child, is a human right.

While the State may have the legal authority to mandate use of vaccines, nobody has the moral authority to FORCE you to get vaccinated or vaccinate your child without your voluntary, informed consent

2. Vaccine Laws Have Exemptions: In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the legal authority of state governments to pass laws requiring citizens residing in the state to use certain vaccines.

Today, all 50 states have enacted vaccine laws that require proof of vaccination for children to attend daycare, elementary, junior and high school and college.

Vaccine requirements vary from state to state and all 50 states allow a medical exemption to vaccination; 48 states allow a religious exemption to vaccination; and 18 states allow a personal, philosophical or conscientious belief exemption to vaccination.

To find out what your state vaccine law says and which exemptions you may take and how to take them, click here.

3. Freedom is Not Free, Become a Vaccine Choice Advocate: Many state governments now require nearly three dozen doses of more than a dozen vaccines to attend school. Medical and religious exemptions are becoming harder to get and exemptions for reasons of conscience are under attack by proponents of forced vaccination.

The National Vaccine Information Center is working with citizens in states to expand or protect legal exemptions to vaccination.

Six Principles for Protecting Vaccine Choices

First Principle: It's Your CHOICE

When exercising your right to voluntary, informed consent to vaccination for yourself or your child, remember that state vaccine laws contain:

1. Legal requirements that school and health officials are responsible for enforcing

2. Legal exemptions that you have the legal right to choose to exercise. (Public schools must allow vaccine exemptions outlined in state vaccine laws, but private religious or other non-state operated schools may reject vaccine exemptions.)

Most state vaccine laws do not allow unvaccinated students with vaccine exemptions to attend school during confirmed outbreaks of certain infectious diseases for defined periods of time.

Remember: Nobody has the moral authority to force you or your child to be injected with a vaccine without your voluntary, informed consent and you have the legal right to exercise exemptions to vaccination according to the laws in your state.

Second Principle: You Have the Right to KNOW

You have the legal right to know the risks and complications of vaccines BEFORE you make the choice of whether or not to allow your child to be vaccinated.

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Reagan in 1986, directed all doctors and other vaccine providers to give parents written information about vaccines BEFORE children are vaccinated.

Remember: All vaccines and other pharmaceutical products carry a risk of injury or death and those risks can be greater for some than others.

Never agree to use a vaccine, drug or other product without fully informing yourself about ALL risks.

The product information insert, which drug companies by law must include with every vial of vaccine provided to public health clinics and private doctors’ offices, includes a description of the vaccine’s reported reactions and precautions.

You can ask for a copy of that vaccine information insert from your doctor or state health department.

Third Principle: Be INFORMED and Prepared

Knowledge is power. Arm yourself with accurate information about vaccination and health. Do your own research and talk to one or more trusted health care professionals before you make any health care decision.

Become an educated consumer and you will be empowered to defend your right to freely make voluntary choices about health, including vaccination, for yourself and your children.

Remember: If you arm yourself with accurate information about vaccines and health, you will be prepared to intelligently and rationally discuss your vaccine choices with your family, friends, colleagues, doctors, elected officials and others in your community.

Fourth Principle: Take RESPONSIBILITY for Your Words and Actions

When you are standing up for your right to know, and freedom to choose, whether or not to vaccinate yourself or your child, how you go about exercising your rights will determine whether or not you will succeed.

In your contact with doctors, school or government health officials, remain calm but politely firm when explaining and defending the vaccine choice you have made.

If you are treated with disrespect or are harassed in any way by a doctor or government official, do not engage in an unproductive argument. You may want to contact an attorney, your elected state representatives or local media if you or your child are threatened.

To publicly post a report of harassment for your vaccine choice, click here.

Remember: Treat others as you want to be treated, even if you are being attacked or harassed for the vaccine choice you have made.

Protect yourself and your family by seeking legal or other expert counsel, if necessary.

Serve as an example for others in your community whenever you defend your right to exercise voluntary, informed consent to vaccination, including the right to decline to use one or more vaccines for yourself or your child.

Fifth Principle: Keep WRITTEN Records

Be sure to ask your doctor for copies of your medical records or your child’s medical records, including recorded information about vaccinations and illnesses. Under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, doctors and other vaccine providers are required by federal law to:

• Write down any serious health problems that occur after vaccination in a child’s permanent medical record

• Keep a permanent record of all vaccines given, including the manufacturer’s name and lot number

• Report serious health problems, hospitalizations injuries and deaths that occur after vaccination to the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). (If your doctor won’t report, you have the right to make a vaccine reaction report to VAERS).

Remember: It is wise to keep written records of your interactions with doctors, school and health officials that involve vaccine choices you make, as well as copies of any vaccine exemptions you file with the state. You may have to hire an attorney to defend your informed consent rights when it comes to vaccination and it is important to have written records.

Sixth Principle: Be COURAGEOUS

It is not easy to stand up for the right to make informed, voluntary choices about vaccination when public health officials, the pharmaceutical industry and many medical doctors are putting pressure on all Americans, especially parents, to use every government recommended vaccine.

The fact that the numbers of doses of government mandated vaccines have tripled in the past quarter century, while the numbers of chronically ill and disabled children have also tripled, offers an opportunity to have a long overdue public conversation about the effects of vaccination on individual and public health.

Remember: Freedom of thought and exercise of free speech is protected under the U.S. Constitution.

You have the right to talk privately and publicly about any concerns you have about vaccine necessity, safety and effectiveness, and to work with your elected officials to modify the vaccine laws in your state.

Become an engaged, courageous citizen activist and protect your right to make vaccine choices.